The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry

Conflict in remote Himalayan plateau could lead to war between India and China

Warnings of a ‘chance of war’ between India and China as nuclear rivals face off Benedict Brooknews.com.au JULY 17, 2017ASK most people to name a current crisis between nuclear armed states and North Korea and the US’ rapidly worsening relations would come to mind.

But there’s another skirmish happening between two nuclear nations and both have far more fully functioning missiles, poised and ready to fire, than Kim Jong-un could even dream off.

Ten thousand feet above sea level, in the sub zero cold of the Himalayas, things could be about to turn hot.

Since mid-June, Chinese and Indian soldiers have lined up “eyeball to eyeball” on the remote Doklam plateau. In recent days, more troops have been sent to the frontline.

Currently it’s a nonlethal battle of platitudes at altitude, but commentators in China have warned, “there could be a chance of war”.

And that’s not a great prospect, given India is thought to have more than 100 nuclear tipped missiles while China’s warheads could total more than 250.

The flashpoint between the two seems mundane ——the building of a new road on the Chinese controlled, but disputed, plateau. But the last time the two went to war, half a century ago, it was also over a road.

There is now said to be “complete stalemate” in the confrontation.

CONFLICT AT THE CHICKEN NECK

China and India have regularly come to blows on their 4000km long and infuriatingly ill-defined border. Remote and treacherous, few people live in these disrupted areas. But any moves to tame them such as, say, through the building of a road to make access easier, immediately risks a conflict.

The current anger kicked off in an area close to what India calls the “chicken neck” — a thin stretch of land that is the only direct link to country’s isolated north east……..

LINE OF ACTUAL CONTROL

“The failure to demarcate the China-India border has led to overlapping perceptions of where the so-called Line of Actual Control lies, guaranteeing rival border patrols will run into each other and force the issue,” Tsering Topgyal, an international relations expert at the University of Birmingham wrote in The Conversation in 2014.